


Contingencies

by doctorkaitlyn



Series: tumblr fics & ficlets. [103]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Blood and Gore, F/F, Femslash Big Bang Monthly Challenge, Femslash February, Femslash February Trope Bingo, First Meetings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 10:02:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10003958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorkaitlyn/pseuds/doctorkaitlyn
Summary: Charlie has no less than two dozen contingency plans for the zombie apocalypse. She's been preparing for this shit foryears.So go figure that she would sleep through the start of itandfind herself backed into a corner, caught completely unaware and with only a tire iron as a weapon.Thankfully, that's where the mysterious stranger with the old gun comes in.





	

**Author's Note:**

> written for the "au: zombie apocalypse" square on my Femslash February Femtrope Bingo Card, and for the Femslash Big Bang Monthly Challenge, where the prompt was 'strangers.'
> 
> **minor emetophobia warning.** no vomiting actually happens, but it's mentioned a few times.

As a self-respecting nerd, Charlie has no less than two dozen contingency plans for the zombie apocalypse. 

Each of the plans addresses a different scenario; they vary based on location (locked in an apartment building, a big-box store, a boat), transmission method of the virus (airborne, through swapping bodily fluids) or how the zombies move (Olympic sprinter fast or shambling slow). She's compiled lists of actual weapons (and how easy they are to obtain) versus makeshift weapons. She's spent hours talking with her hacker community about the benefits and drawbacks of going for it as a lone wolf versus finding a community, going over each of the plans in detail and revising, all while multitasking and leeching money from a rich asshole's bank account so that it could be put to better use. 

But for all of her hours spent half-seriously planning, for all of her Word documents filled with lists, there is one contingency plan that Charlie failed to come up with. 

Namely, a contingency plan for when the zombie apocalypse takes her completely by surprise. 

It happens in the middle of May. She spends forty-six hours straight trying to get through the towering firewall of a billion-dollar corporation, just because another hacker deemed it impossible. She accomplishes it with the help of a six-pack of energy drinks and more sugar than even she cares to think of, and immediately after she transfers some of the corporation's money to her own dwindling bank account, she stumbles over to her mattress and passes out on top of the covers. 

Nineteen hours later, she wakes up with a rumbling stomach and a dry throat. After stopping in the bathroom, she shoves her feet into a pair of loose sneakers and stumbles out of her apartment, heading for the small convenience store just down the block. All she has in her pockets are a handful of bills and coins and her keys. 

The city is simultaneously louder and quieter than usual. The actual street noise has almost entirely vanished; there are no televisions blaring from windows, no kids screaming on balconies or running across the street, nobody fighting. There's no foot or vehicle traffic in the vicinity, but in the distance, numerous sirens overlap and wail. 

Charlie notices but doesn't pay it any mind. There's probably some sports event going on in the expansive arena down by the waterfront, and if the sirens are any indication, the hometown team lost and all the fans are rioting. 

Nothing for her to worry about. 

She winds her way around some junk (including a pair of sneakers, strangely enough) blocking the sidewalk and makes her way into the store. A jaunty bell jingles overhead when she pushes the door open. Once it silences itself, the store goes silent, which makes Charlie stop in her tracks and look up from her crumpled fistful of bills. Usually, the tiny television bolted in the corner of the store is turned up to maximum volume, but the screen is dark. The whole store is dark, actually; the glaringly bright track lighting is all off, as are the freezers lining the wall to Charlie’s right. 

The store _smells_ too. At first, Charlie thinks it’s just rotting food, but it’s meatier than that, more intense. It’s not a smell she’s ever experienced before, but some part of her brain, some primal instinct, screams that the smell is decaying flesh. 

“Hello?” she calls out, stuck between retreating to the door or stepping further into the store. In the end, she moves forward, but twists her body so that she can keep one eye pointed towards the entrance. “Is there anybody here?” 

No answer comes, and she continues moving towards the counter on the left. There's an unopened pack of smokes resting beside the cash register with a red streak, maybe a fingerprint, smeared over the cellophane wrapping. Charlie only briefly glances at it before she leans forward, peers over the counter- 

-and subsequently almost throws up. 

The store’s owner, who cheerfully sold her dozens upon dozens of energy drinks with no judgement, is sprawled on his back in the narrow space on the other side of the counter. His chest has been ripped open, and Charlie can see his ribs, cracked down the middle and spread open like the pages of a book. Much of him is covered in blood, but Charlie can still make out what are definitely bite marks covering the remnants of his throat and arms. 

“Holy fuck,” she says, backing away from the counter and taking a deep breath, which turns out to be a mistake; the smell of rot fills her nose, and she chokes back acid. 

There’s a chance that the man was just mauled by dogs or attacked by someone on some horrible drug, but that wouldn’t explain the silence on the street, the trash on the sidewalk, the cacophonous sirens in the distance. 

Zombies, on the other hand, would. 

She immediately starts skimming through her mental contingency plans, but not one of them addresses this situation. She’s been caught completely off guard, stuck in an indefensible building. It's possible that she’s entirely screwed. 

But she refuses to go down in a sobbing, useless heap.

If the convenience store is anything like the others she’s been in, there’s probably a weapon stashed somewhere underneath the cash register. And while that means she’s going to have to slide over the counter and maybe step in the owner’s dried blood, it could be the only thing that gets her back to her apartment alive. 

She takes a deep breath through her mouth, plants her hands on the counter, and slides over, knocking over the pack of cigarettes and a small display of gum. 

Her feet have just barely touched the stained tiles when the bell over the front door jingles. 

She ducks down, accidentally breathes through her nose, and tries not to vomit. As slow, shuffling footsteps make their way through the door, she looks around for any sign of a weapon. There’s a metal box on a shelf directly in front of her that looks approximately pistol size, but when she tentatively tries to open it, it remains stubbornly locked. She keeps looking, trying to move things around as quietly as possible. Every time she breathes in through her nose, she’s hit with not only the smell of the rotting corpse behind her, but the increasing scent of decay and sun-baked blood coming from the other side of the counter. 

For possibly the first time ever, she’s very happy that she had no food in her apartment when she woke up. 

After what feels like hours of silent rummaging, she finally finds a tire iron tucked on a shelf just underneath the cash register. It’s hefty, heavy enough that she thinks it could do some serious damage, even if the strength of her swing is a little lacking. She wraps her fingers around it and thumps it against the palm of her hand a few times, preparing herself mentally to slam the end of it into a reanimated corpse’s face.

She can do this. She’s done it thousands of times in video games. 

She hesitantly moves into a crouch, reaching for the rim of the counter with her free hand, trying not to lean back against the owner’s body. In addition to the footsteps, she can hear other sounds on the other side of the counter; groaning and snuffling, like a dog searching for a bone in the dirt.

She doesn’t exactly relish the idea of being the bone in that situation. 

She tightens her fingers and yanks herself to her feet, cocking her arm back. 

Before she can swing the tire iron, the bell over the door jingles madly again. 

“Get down!”

She immediately drops back to the floor, just in time for a gunshot to split the air. The bullet slams into the wall above her head and plaster showers down into her hair, along with something a lot wetter that Charlie hopes, against all odds, isn’t blood. 

She doesn’t dare check. She’s managed to avoid throwing up so far, but that would be the last straw. 

She waits a few seconds, but when no other gunshots are forthcoming, she gets to her feet, fingers still wrapped around the tire iron, ears ringing. The counter is covered in dark blood and viscera and, when she peers over the edge, she finds herself staring at what may have been a young man at some point in time. 

Now, it’s a mottled zombie _sans_ face. 

“Sorry about the mess.” That gets Charlie’s attention, and she looks up just in time to see a woman around her own age stand up from behind a display of junk food. She looks like she just walked off the set of an old adventure film; her tan leather jacket and white buttoned shirt are pristine, and she’s fiddling with a revolver that looks like it belongs in a museum.

“Don't apologize. I’m pretty sure you just saved my life,” Charlie replies, glancing back down at the zombie. “I’m not sure that I could have killed it.” 

“I’m sure you would have been fine,” the woman replies breezily, tucking the revolver back into a leather holster strapped to her hip. “Their heads usually split after a few hard hits.” She comes over to the counter, steps over the zombie without looking, and stretches out her hand. “Here. I’ll help you over.” 

“Okay.” Charlie hands her the tire iron first, and once it’s stashed on a nearby shelf, she takes the woman’s hand and clambers over. She manage to avoid drenching her hands in corpse blood, but some gets on her pants when she slides over. 

Thankfully, it was about time for her to get some new jeans anyway.

“I’m Dorothy,” the woman says, once Charlie is back on her feet. 

“Charlie.” She grabs her tire iron again, although her resolve to use it is definitely not as strong as it was only moments ago. “Why do you seem completely cool with the fact there are _literal_ zombies walking around?” 

“I saw worse in Oz,” Dorothy replies with a shrug, turning to examine a display of dehydrated meat snacks. 

“Oz? As in, Australia?” Dorothy looks back over her shoulder with a raised eyebrow and a slight frown. 

“No. Oz. As in, the Emerald City Oz.”

Charlie’s brain stutters at that. That’s entirely not possible, since Oz is a completely fictional land, but Dorothy says it deadpan, without the hint of a smile or a twinkle in her dark eyes. 

Obviously, she believes what she’s said and, well, since she _did_ just save Charlie’s life, Charlie’s not going to interrogate the matter too deeply at the present moment. 

“If you’re still around later, I’m going to ask more about that, because _what_?” she finally says, grabbing a few individually wrapped meat sticks and jamming them in her pockets. “But for now, since you have a gun and I have a tire iron, do you think you can escort me back to my apartment? If this is a thing that’s actually happening, I’m going to need some better clothes.” 

“Maybe a shower too, if the water is still working,” Dorothy says with a frown, looking at Charlie’s hair. 

“Yeah. That too,” Charlie mutters as a wave of nausea washes over her. Dorothy’s frown shifts into an apologetic smile, and she grabs a package of beef jerky from the display and shoves it into the brown leather messenger bag hanging over her shoulder. 

“Do you have any large bags in your home?” she asks. “This is rather small, and we’re going to need all the food and water we can carry.” Charlie nods; she’s spent most of her life living out of duffel bags, and there’s at least two stashed somewhere in her apartment. 

“Yeah. I should have something that’ll do the trick.” 

“Well, in that case,” Dorothy replies, pulling her revolver out of her holster and yanking the front door of the store open, “lead the way. I’ll make sure nothing touches you.” 

Although they only just met, Charlie believes her.

**Author's Note:**

> as always, I can be found on [tumblr.](http://banshee-cheekbones.tumblr.com/) :)


End file.
